As Arena celebrates its 40th birthday, its editor predicts the term "left wing" will soon be dead. Robin Usher looks at how this left-leaning magazine plans to handle the future.

Guy Rundle is an effortlessly funny man. Describing his 10 years as a TV comedy writer, he says he has seen more failed pilots than the Japanese air force. Boom boom.

He is a veteran of such shows as Backburner and Jimeoin and is now working as a producer for Channel Seven developing new shows.

"Being a producer is no different from being a writer except that now I have to ring people back," he says.

He is speaking in a South Melbourne cafe full of television and advertising types, which only increases the contrast between his day job and his other life, the subject of the conversation.

When he is not contributing to the capitalist economy via the TV industry and writing opinion pieces for newspapers, he is an editor of Arena magazine, one of Australia's rare surviving left-wing publications. The difference could not be greater. Whereas television is pure capitalism, Arena is organised on a voluntary co-operative basis without wages.

Arena will issue its 40th anniversary issue today, making it nearly as old as television in Australia. There is no sign of it failing.

"Left-wing social movements went through a trough about a decade ago, but the anti-globalisation movements in the late '90s started a revival," Rundle says.

The circulation for each bi-monthly magazine is a steady 2500, but its readership is much higher at about 15,000.

"A lot of people read it in libraries, especially students."

Rundle predicts an even brighter future, although he says in a generation's time the term "left-wing" may no longer be used.

"But what will continue is the growing opposition to the way the world is organised," he says, pointing to the spread of illnesses such as depression, panic attacks and chronic fatigue.

"They are as significant for this society as black-lung disease was for coal miners. They are becoming prevalent because it is getting harder to find any meaning in the way life is organised now."

One of the keys to Arena's survival was the decision about 30 years ago to develop a commercial printery, which has ensured the organisation's financial independence.

"We have never sought any financial assistance from the Australia Council or any other organisation - we are completely independent."

The printery runs as a separate organisation and is the only part of the Arena operation that pays wages. There are few limits to what it does, although Rundle says it would not take on pornography or accept a contract from the League of Rights.

The remaining part of Arena's activities is a bi-annual journal of social and cultural theory, designed mainly for academics. All this is organised in a low, rambling building in Kerr Street in the heart of Fitzroy, which stands as a reminder of pre-gentrification. The street starts with the printery and runs east, passing a crash-repair shop before hitting trendy Brunswick Street, where three latte joints face one another across the intersection.

Arena's principal founder, Geoff Sharp, 78, still attends editorial meetings and his intelligence shows no sign of diminishing, although his colleagues dispute whether he is best described as stubborn or dogged.

It is likely that both attributes were necessary to steer the publication through the many shoals and storms that have beset the left since Arena was founded in the disillusionment following the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Both Sharp and his wife Nonie (another co-founder) abandoned the Communist Party, but were determined to continue examining the faults and inequalities of modern society.

A roll-call of Australian left and progressive writers, academics and critics has been published in the magazine, including Patrick White, Don Watson, Judy Brett, Humphrey McQueen, Dennis Altman, Gary Foley, Jim Cairns and Albert Langer. International writers included Noam Chomsky, Jurgen Habermas and John Pilger.

Sharp says he never doubted the magazine's longevity. "It might close down, but I'm sure it will continue," he says.

"Under present circumstances, the world is heading for major cultural problems. Co-operation is an indispensable part of every society, but it can't function with the dictates of economic rationalism, which demand that every institution be run for profit."

He claims even sport has been turned into just another aspect of the economy, making it easy to be appropriated by politicians for their own purposes.

"We might want John Howard to stop attending every sporting event in the country, but we know there is nothing we can do about it," he shrugs, accepting the limits of what can be achieved.

But Sharp remains optimistic about the prospect of broadening the debate about the way people live. "At the same time, we're not kidding ourselves that we've come all that far."

He points to increasing signs of communal dissatisfaction, citing the example of Pauline Hanson on the right.

He says he never expected to have much in common with historian Geoffrey Blainey, who coined the term "black armband view of history" to describe the emphasis on Aboriginal murders during white settlement. "But Blainey has predicted that socialism could make a comeback," he says. "That surprised me, but I have to agree with it.

"Global changes keep impacting on the way we live all the time. I'm sure that more and more people appreciate that it is something that we have to consider."

Sharp points out the challenge is to work out what elements of globalisation might be unstoppable and what can be changed.

"We could all come unstuck if we don't reflect on this and find bridges for our concerns into everyday life and politics."